Helen H. Gardener

Helen Hamilton Gardener (1853–1925), born Alice Chenoweth, was an American author, rationalist public intellectual, political activist, and government functionary. Gardener produced many lectures, articles, and books during the 1880s and 1890s and is remembered today for her role in the freethought and women's suffrage movements and for her place as a pioneering woman in the top echelon of the American civil service.

Early years

Alice Chenoweth, best remembered by her pen name, Helen Hamilton Gardener, was born near Winchester, Virginia, on January 21, 1853. She was the youngest of six children born to Rev. Alfred Griffith Chenoweth, an Episcopalian minister who had become a Methodist circuit rider, and his wife, the former Katherine A. Peel. The Chenoweth family traced its American antecedents back to a certain Arthur Chenoweth who had arrived in the fledgling Province of Maryland in 1635 to receive a grant of land for honorable service to Lord Baltimore.

The Chenoweth family subsequently made their way to Virginia, where Alice's father had inherited slaves. As objectors to the institution of slavery, the Chenoweths manumitted their slaves in 1853 over the existing legal obstacles to that course of action. The family moved to Washington, D.C. shortly thereafter. This was followed in 1855 by a move to Greencastle, Indiana. During the American Civil War, Chenoweth's father served the Federal cause, returning to the enemy state of Virginia to serve as a guide for Union troops there.

Alice Chenoweth received an excellent education and showed an interest in and aptitude for science and sociology. She associated with older people as a girl and read extensively on serious themes. She studied with tutors and attended various local schools, moving to Cincinnati, Ohio in her late teen years, where she graduated high school. After leaving high school Chenoweth enrolled in the Cincinnati Normal School, from which she graduated in June 1873.